Holland Park

Holland Park will regenerate a prominent city centre block to provide 433 high quality apartments and contribute a landscaped courtyard to the City’s public realm.

The Holland Park site comprises a prominent urban block, previously home to the Strathclyde Police Headquarters, that is defined by the grid street pattern of the city centre of Glasgow. The scale of the site and its influential location within the city present a unique opportunity to deliver a high quality residential and mixed-use development that can contribute meaningfully to the locale by enhancing the townscape and local environment. Our scheme will provide an exciting collection of architectural residential building forms that comprise 433 Private Rented Sector (PRS) apartments with associated commercial uses set along the street frontages and within the enclosed public courtyard.

THE SITE
The site occupies a full city block, located within the City Centre and bound by Holland, Pitt, West George and West Regent Street. It addresses a complex and varied immediate context in scale, materiality, epoch and use.

PROJECT BRIEF
The extent of the site is extruded to respond to the project brief. The brief is applied above a to zone allow a fully activated street frontage.

URBAN CONTEXT
In keeping with the Glasgow grid-iron street layout, a central courtyard is introduced. The removed mass is added to the perimeter of the site to respond to the consistent datum of the surrounding streets.

FORMATION OF MASS
The block is broken down into eight elements, placing critical height and mass at the four corners and creating the basis of an elevational response to the immediate context.

DAYLIGHTING
The mass is adapted to maximise the benefit of sunlight penetrating the central courtyard and apartments. This is primarily achieved through the lowering of buildings at the south west edge of the site.

STREET CONTEXT + BUILT FORM
Key elements are developed to address massing datums of the immediate site context, ranging from ground + 3 storeys to ground + 6 storeys.

CITY SKYLINE
Articulating the four primary corners of the site, the four massing elements are developed to respond to key datums within the wider city skyline.

WIDER URBAN CONTEXT
The emerging Glasgow skyline is developing as part of a wider regeneration strategy for the area. The proposals are developed to complement the key aspects and outlooks across the city as well as offering civic presence. Slim profiles are presented to key vistas and heritage assets.

FOUND SPACE
The semi-public central courtyard is opened to Pitt Street, via a pend, offering a quiet respite space within the city for the public to dwell and enjoy.

URBAN LANDSCAPING
Through the introduction of a central courtyard and activation of key rooftop areas, the design benefits from its south-westerly aspect and creates much needed areas of urban landscape and amenity.

“It will be Scotland's first major Build-to-Rent development”

Evening Times, Vivienne Nicoll, 1st November 2016

We have created a collection of forms that respond to the strong urban ‘grid-iron’ plan synonymous with Glasgow. In the development of the elevations, well-established rules in classical architecture were applied to implement the simple rule of three:

Stylobate/base to address how the building touches the ground to engage with the city streetscape

Portico/middle comprising the main body of the composition and creating visual interest that is legible from eye level

Entablature/roofline to crown the building and address the way in which it engages with the skyline

Whilst the horizontal building masses address the datum lines of the local surrounding context, the taller corner elements express themselves as part of the emerging citywide landscape, articulating and evolving skywards to present strong and visually exciting “faces” to the city. The mixed palette of materials gives each building element an identity of its own, whilst the composition is unified by a common architectural language. The slender dark metal reticulated façade of the tallest element signals the main elevation and entrance to the development, starkly contrasting against its lower lying counterparts of light stone and brick that are crowned with communal roof terraces to visually link the development to the streets below.

The building recesses at its Holland Street frontage to contribute space back to the public realm and engage with the potential future development of the former Glasgow High School, whilst a diversity of active frontages wrap along both street and courtyard to encourage a vibrant and usable public realm that gives a sense of place and community.

The public courtyard references the traditional back-courts of Glasgow, carved from the central space made permeable by a pedestrian pend that opens the space to Pitt Street. This landscaped court space exploits its changes in level to provide terraced seating for informal break-out and event space, enclosed by a varied roofscape that allows light to permeate this hidden space in addition to the number of onlooking private garden roof terraces.

A residential amenity lounge crowns the stone corner facing onto Holland Street, opening onto a vast, south-facing garden deck that offers flexibility in its use and a unique visual link between the street and courtyard. At this communal level, residents have access to a wealth of amenities including a café, gymnasium and private study and dining spaces.